Thursday, November 08, 2012

There are many good things written since the election...

The Roman historian Livy wrote about the terminal decline of the Roman Republic that “Nec vitia nostra nec remedia pati possumus… We can bear neither our vices nor the remedies.”

Alas, I fear that our vices have called forth precisely the leaders that reflect those vices. The vices feed the leaders, and they the vices.

We may no longer have the collective will to make the changes that must be made to change course.

The last couple days have prompted me to reflect on the Church’s primary job: to keep as many people out of hell as possible.

People will chose to sin, die in sin, no matter what we do to help them to a different course. We must strive to help save ourselves and as many others as possible.

St Augustine one day, in his basilica in Hippo, one day was preaching a tough message. He broke off his line of thought and explained that if he didn’t preach his tough message he could not be saved. If they listen or didn’t listen he was going to preach anyway and thus save his soul. “But” he concluded, “Nolo salvus esse sine vobis! … I don’t want to be saved without you!”

Now that we in the USA are, I think, are on a course toward the iceberg, we need to think soberly about how we will approach the time and resources we have left.

During this time when Benedict XVI has called us to revive the Faith where it has died or still just slumbers, get to work.

Will our shepherds be able to bear applying the remedies?

Augustine also said that the doctor doesn’t stop cutting just because the patient is screaming for him to stop.

Do you think those who warned about the collapse of Rome were "drama queens" as well? Just askin'.

Seems to me history is filled with examples of what happens to cultures that embrace vice, not just the Roman Empire: e.g., France before the French revolution and the Weimer Republic before the Third Reich. The same was true in many countries prior to WW I, especially in Germany where Kirchner's "street walker art" and immorality and hedonism were mainstream and in the U.S. with Margaret Sanger's birth control revolution.

I'd say predicting serious problems for a country steeped in innocent blood is a no-brainer and hardly the material of drama queens.

Abortion, contraception, fornication, homosex, blasphemy, brainwashing and corrupting of the innocent, usury, money-changing, monetary-mortgage slavery, government slavery to banks through borrowing money at interest instead of claiming its national sovereignty precisely where it ought, unjust military assaults on other countries, divorce, adultery, masturbation, internet pornography, pornography in public displays, pornography in movies and television, graphic violence and gore in movies and television aimed at lowering morale and removing human dignity, public shamelessness in homo-parades, pollution, raping of the land through bad stewardship and concern only for prophet, tampering with genetics, cloning and Lord knows what else scientists are doing with God's creation, anonymous sodomy in public places, rampant drug use, high suicide rate, murder, self-mutilation (tattoo and piercing culture), consumerism, rampant sense of self-entitlement...

Nothing to see here folks. Move along, move along. We have ushered in the new age and we have made our peace with sin. Suppress your conscience or you will be enemy of the state.

While I'm with you on the "tattoo and piercing culture", it does not follow that all tattooing or piercing is sinful.

Nor is all money lent or borrowed at interest the same as usury - lending money is not the same as lending loaves of bread or ears of corn; in the current economic order, it is a fungible resource (and has no tangible existence), and it is now understood to be like lending productive machinery, and a modest interest is to make up for losses that could have been made had the money been invested otherwise.

This is is not me trying to "excuse sin", unless you want to accuse the past ten or so popes of the same thing, and all major 20th century pre-Vatican II moralists and other orthodox voices like Fr. John Hardon of doing the same.

It is usurious to charge large interest rates, and I think it also also usurious what most loan companies do - especially student loans: they apply payments to interest before applying payments to principle, so that they can milk as much money as possible for as long as possible.

See the Catholic Encyclopedia from 1910: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08077a.htm

While I'm with you on the "tattoo and piercing culture", it does not follow that all tattooing or piercing is sinful.

Nor is all money lent or borrowed at interest the same as usury - lending money is not the same as lending loaves of bread or ears of corn; in the current economic order, it is a fungible resource (and has no tangible existence), and it is now understood to be like lending productive machinery, and a modest interest is to make up for losses that could have been made had the money been invested otherwise.

This is is not me trying to "excuse sin", unless you want to accuse the past ten or so popes of the same thing, and all major 20th century pre-Vatican II moralists and other orthodox voices like Fr. John Hardon of doing the same.

It is usurious to charge large interest rates, and I think it also also usurious what most loan companies do - especially student loans: they apply payments to interest before applying payments to principle, so that they can milk as much money as possible for as long as possible.

See the Catholic Encyclopedia from 1910: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08077a.htm

Government borrowing most the nation's money supply is pure slavery. Since it is also borrowed at interest, it also usury.

"This is is not me trying to "excuse sin", unless you want to accuse the past ten or so popes of the same thing, and all major 20th century pre-Vatican II moralists and other orthodox voices like Fr. John Hardon of doing the same."

"Drama Queen?". It was Catholics, by and large, "pro-life" Catholics, no less, who accepted "the bribery against the innocent." Older Catholics worried about their healthcare, Hispanics worried about their immigration status, Parents and friends of gays, who see rejecting SSM as a rejection of their homosexual loved one, who placed their self-interest above the lives of unborn innocents. Fr. Z is on the money; this is a conversion issue and the conversion will be painful because it involves sacrifice... Since we are to weak to perform the surgery on ourselves, the Divine Physician will have to do it for us.

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